That didn’t last long.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding4 Comments

This morning I made a pact with my inner loony that, whatever the provocation, I would turn the other pedal when tested by the killing zone of the commuting blacktop. This lasted precisely one hundred and seventy yards – I never even made it out of the village.

Yes in a distance that’d struggle to trouble even an arthritic tortoise, my cup floweth over with angst and bile. For – and let me just insert a hollow laugh here – safety the road out to the badlands of the A418 is bollarded at regular interval to prevent desperate cagers from ploughing through fleshy pedestrians. The road narrows to a car width and a bit so thereby posing the equation “aggressive car driver + trembling cyclist > road available”

The man (it always is), determined to save the two seconds he’d have been stuck behind me at 20mph (rather than the 30mph limit through the village), attempted to solve the equation by gunning his engine and banging his horn (is that allowed even in the comfort of your own car?). I responded by plotting a CTC approved route five foot from the curb in case his impatience licensed an attempt to drill me into the curb.

Bollard dispatched, he accelerated past about one inch from my ear throwing out random words and gestures like a man missing most of his frontal lobe. The inner loony was screaming to be unleashed in the form of some international finger language but I was strong. Then the bloke slowed down, pulled along side and starting dishing out supplementary verbals.

The loony rose like an unstoppable curry powered by ten pints of gassy lager and the game was up. Normally, I allow the car driving nutter to make some preposterous statement giving me time to calm down and formulate something close to a rational response. Not today, the loony spluttered like a cold engine before unloading an verb laden invective on wide ranging subjects to whit: Bollards, Fucking idiots, Golf Drivers, Wankers, Impatient tossers and pointless fuckhandles were prominent.

His ire was almost as spectacular, fuelled by my fist waving rant. But the loony went properly beserk when he made – what he felt – was a winning point regarding car tax, him paying it and me not. After explaining that it is actually vehicle excise duty and, anyway, it isn’t a carte blanche to exterminate two wheeled road users – and even if it was I pay it too, so would it be ok for me to fetch my car and run him over?

Things went somewhat downhill from there. He offered to fight me in lieu of having anything intellectual going in his favour. This caused a brief internal hiatus as I battered down the hatches and refused to allow el loono to start swinging. It was close though, very close indeed but I was bloody annoyed to be dragged down to a insult trading level, yet I don’t think any calm logic would’ve changed his base position of “you fucking cyclists are the scum of the Earth“.

Coming home, another hot hatch (translation: small penis’d driver) screamed round a slower car and nearly totalled me as I was minding my business on other side of the carridgeway. He even had time to flip me the bird as I headed for the bushes.

It’s starting to get to me now. I don’t think 2007 will finish without punches being thrown because I’m running out of other options.

Trail Tails – Ottawa MTBing.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

While I find the Canadians honest, open, enthusiastic and fun loving, there is a certain whiff of smugness about them. And with good reason – a thinly populated sports playground, clean air, low crime, vibrant economy and a work/life balance that sees everyone knock off at 5pm. Ottawa is a good example of this. It suffers the same urban sprawl that circles most UK cities , but nobody really cares. Because there is just so much land to build on that even when a thousand houses spring up in a place where there use to be forest, a million kilometres of bugger all still extends in all directions.

My friend Andy was an hour late picking me up from the airport because the local bike shop had forgotten that I’d hired a bike from them. Despite two phone calls remind them; Welcome to Canada the land of the occasionally smug and extremely laid back. We still had time to go riding straight from his house with the woody singletrack, nestling under a rain lashed sky reminded me of home, but home on steroids and free from people.

Still this was just a warm up (or more a rain down) and less than twelve hours later, we drove 10k to Kanata Lakes, a well known MTB mecca squeezed by encroaching development. More rocks, more roots, less mud, more fun. Andy’s shock exploded about 10 yards in but he gamely carried on.

The North Shore is there for a reason, to transport you over bogs and streams. I found the best way to tackle it was at walking pace. That was me walking and the bike being pushed. I wanted to hate the Specialized Epic for the race bike it was, but a combination of bling kit and a singletrack missile hidden behind the graphics meant I ended up really loving it. Except for the insanely low bottom bracket which with fat flat pedals installed made it a bit of a handful in the rockier sections.

Not even slightly sated, we sandwiched in the extreme oddness that is Canada day with another ride in the evening. True to form it pissed down again but only for the first ten minutes. After that, a long lost feelings of fitness and bravery propelled me flying through the singletrack which quickly ended in yours truly getting properly lost. Thankfully the fellas came back looking for me or I was bear food for sure.

Our last ride was to Camp Fortune on the far side of Ottawa deep into the Gatineau mountains and super bike friendly with marked trails and chairlifts. Sadly the chairlifts were only servicing the big rig downhill trails and the nice lady at reception felt the cross country trails would provide more options in the staying alive phase space. So we winched up hot fireroads and plunged down double black trails peppered with north shore, steep drops, monster roots (see above) and endless ways to properly hurt yourself.

As can be seen Martin with his twelve year old canti-braked, lead lined wheeled grip reaper rode most of it. The bits he didn’t ride, he fell off on but this strangely didn’t deter him from getting back on again. When he gets a proper mountain bike, he’s going to enter the ratified stratosphere of “super nutter”.

We even found a safe little jump to play on and regressed to teenage years until Martin – what a surprise – hit it so fast he totally missed the trail on the far side. Time to leave, drink beer in the sunshine and reflect on four rides that’ll live long in the memory.

British Columbia it isn’t. But if you boat is floating on woody singletrack, fantastic views, endless trails – right on your doorstep – and just damn nice people to ride with, Ottawa and the surrounds takes some beating.

So there’s a brief trail review. As the Canadians would say “You’re Welcome“

A picture saves..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

…. a thousand words. Jetlagged, busy but with much to tell. Until I can string a few amusing words together, you’ll have to make do with a few pictures. These were taken before many arduous and difficult days of dawn to dusk work. In case anyone from the firm is reading 🙂

.Martin on ShonkyShore(TM)
Nice Bike, Nicer singletrack

Kanata Lakes, MTB playground, Andy B riding

A few more here:

Many more words to come including Al’s one page guide on how to get home when jetlagged and abandoned at Heathrow 😉

Right, I’m going back to bed.

I have looked at the UK weather forecast…

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

…. and I’m not coming back. Three reputable weather sites agree that the low pressure which has brought storms, floods and bloody misery to almost everyone is set to continue for approximately ever.

All this talk of ceaseless depressions is leaving me understandably depressed. Aside from the obvious record rainfall in June, further cheery starts include no day of unbroken sunshine for TWO MONTHS and – in the South East at least – there has been serial rain for the last 33 days.

At least in Winter, we expect the weather to be crap 🙁

The view from 38,000 feet

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

I’m going to grudgingly admit that the new business class (sorry executive first) for Air Canada is a whole load better than the old one. But that’s like saying being menaced by a slightly vexed sheep is not quite as awful when compared to the full body killed and eaten experience from an angry sabre toothed tiger.

Gone have the cracked leather seats, 640×480 RGB bulkhead TV projection and in have come sleepy seats with a thousand controls, personal DVD systems and a whole bunch of other game/map/audio options that don’t actually work. But hey, the seats are very cool and you don’t have to elbow some fat guy on his third pudding when you need a wee. Which since I pre-hydrated with three glasses or orange juice and a litre of water is currently running at about a ten minute frequency.

The planes still only have two engines though. I may have previously mentioned how unhappy I am about that.

My fellow passengers in first class (and it’s all a bit wrong as all the poor b@stards in steerage have to walk thru this sci-fi seat arrangement marvelling at the pompous rich people within) are an eclectic mix of arrogant and annoying. One of the stewardess’s isn’t very well but this doesn’t stop these needy overgrown children demanding stuff they could quite easily do themselves.

The whole flying thing has come full circle – when air travel was for the rich back in the 30’s, it was all galleried fuselages and foie grass for breakfast. Then we had ‘pack us in and sell it cheap’ of the Laker era and now we’re back to the chippy fuckers paying thousands for a 7hr flight while those in steerage down are basically slightly expensive cargo.

I always feel guilty checking in, avoiding the queues, and then hitting the fast track where the wait is merely 10 minutes whereas everyone else has at least an hour of hot, turgid hell, and then the bloke in front of you still forgets he has to take his laptop out.

And if that isn’t enough, there is some kind of 1984 RightThink going on as you stumble out of security separated from about half your personal belongings. You’re flung into a neon hell of Satan’s wares double discounted and irritatingly pedalled by minimum waged uniformed desperados.

Maybe I’ve become a bit too cynical but I couldn’t wait to run away, get away to the calm of the lounge where many people displayed characteristics best described as “quite arrogant without much to be arrogant about“. I never really lost that working class chip on my shoulder, and I find myself being studiously polite to everyone from those cleaning the bogs to those serving you drinks.

I’d like to think this is because I recognise their worth in a world lacking in meritocracy, but I wonder if some of it is because I don’t want to be grouped with the self important arse sat opposite. Honestly some of these people, just so far divorced from reality, it’s scary. If I had any real working class credentials left, I’d punch the lot of them.

Still after only being singled out four times by serious looking men representing a myriad of UK/Canadian security services, I finally made it into the country. Apparently business travelling is still viewed by a few “ I assume these people have access to neither television or newspapers “ as a perk of some kind of privileged class. It isn’t, being here is great, getting here is bloody dreadful.

It’d be quicker to walk there.

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Pick three ideal attributes for a taxi driver? Punctual, careful and polite would seem a good starting point. But deaf, near sighted and stupid are probably not the first qualities you’d be stacking your CV with, if you were trying for a job driving the public around.

Clearly the bloke who fetched up at my place fifteen minutes late had somehow slipped through the net. Things didn’t start well when he turned left out of the road and headed for the motoring insanity that is Aylesbury on a wet Saturday morning. After a couple of polite interjections which he pointedly ignored while trying to reprogram the Sat-nav, I was forced to be a little firmer.

I explained that having lived here for 10 years and driven myself to the airport about a hundred times, I may be in a slightly better position to direct him than his sulking electronic mappage. Not only did I back my own route finding ability, a secret agenda was all about survival as his repeated punching of the touch screen diverted his weak eyes from the road.

Having persuaded him to tack in a direction TOWARD the airport, he then further undermined my confidence by asking which terminal we were trying for. I’ve no idea, I’m not good at details but I was able to whip out the communications thingy before being roundly beaten by the Air Canada website which only operates with Internet Exploder version 4 and that pre-assumes the worm hole expansion pack installed.

A more traditional approach of phoning the wife support service quickly put us back on track until he asked right terminal three, that’s Gatwick is it? Unless there has been a rapid building plan around Reigate, I’m pretty sure the UK’s second airport has only two terminals. And I would have though he’d have known that too.

At this point it was obvious that his fascination for the Sat-nav was to compensate for his partial blindness “ looking at the little screen seemed to be his terrifying approach of working out where the next corner would be.

I’m sure many of you “ as I did “ can immediately saw the flaw in this plan. The Sat-nav is blissfully unaware of the metal tonnage in play in front, behind and around us. I closed my eyes and waited for the airport or death by family car sandwich.

I’m sat here waiting to go, cheered by the happy news that the aircraft have been significantly refurbished which is welcome, although this doesn’t extend to crafting on an extra engine under each wing. So while I can have my ego polished in leather seated comfort, my mind will still be screamingly terrified of plunging into the Atlantic.

I hate flying.

The quarterback is toast!

On By AlexIn Site Stuff2 Comments

Which movie then, come on? No Googling, that is like cheating at golf which is marginally worse than actually playing golf. Although in my current uni-gloved status, I do feel the urge to reach for my driver. Or a driver through his open window whereupon my mood would be much calmed by the therapeutic laying about of his major organs with a nine iron. Any cager will do – half of ’em are deliberately trying to kill you, the other half are just absent minded murderers.

Anyway wresting myself briefly back to the point, the hedgehog shall this week be most resembling a raspberry (stick with me here), unloved, unwanted and unpickled. I make that random analogy since our garden is currently lost under the rampant expansion of a thousand raspberry trees/bushes/triffids. Should there be a nuclear strike in leafy Buckinghamshire tomorrow, and assuming one can extract all the major food groups from a acne’d grape, we’ll be fine for about a thousand years. Failing that, it’s Agent Orange and a good burn.
That wasn’t the point either.

To be succinct (oh I hear your pleading) for once, it is a happy triumvirate of Canada, Work, Me. Well two out of three ain’t bad. Everything I wrote last time holds true except for the puncture story, but in it’s place is a predictable finger wag at some wanker thinking it is someway clever to ride his horrid folder on the TDF course. And if my spleen is somehow insufficiently un-vented after that, there’s always the weather to talk about.

I’ll leave you with this; in a moment of narcissistic vanity (tautology reigns on the hedgehog), the site stats tell me two things.

1: Another 150 hits in June and it’s our biggest month yet
2: At least 30{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of them last only 2 seconds but leave notice of a quality penis enlargement product. Is it just me that sees the irony in that?

I’m not sure which worries me most 😉

Vanity..

On By AlexIn Site Stuff2 Comments

… oh I know what it looks like. A bit like me really in a self promoting, willy waving kind of way. Although I try to keep the latter to indoor use only and not in front of the children. But after a quite staggering volume of email from mental patients allowed access to a web browser, I’ve finally given in. If only so I can craft an auto-reply to the oft asked question “Found your blog, occasionally amusing, not reading all that shit you’ve written, anything mildly funny in the archives?“.

The answer is something along the lines of humour is a very personal thing. But opening myself up to justifiable questions of extreme narcissism, here is the stuff you have most read.

I now fully expect to see their original emails forwarded back to me with “so, the answer is no then“

Altitude training

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff, Road Riding6 Comments

You know those proper athletes who jet off half way up the world to run laps around the summit of Kilimanjaro? The idea being that on returning to sea level, their lungs will be supercharged by more heavily oxygenated air so delivering a legal performance benefit. It has always struck me as an extremely desperate approach to gain a barely perceptible advantage – that is until I tried the same thing with my courier bag.

In the “Devil’s sack” as I cheekily like to think of it are, what appear to be, a random collection of bike spares sufficient to build something the ‘A Team’ would be proud of. Many times I have come to the aid of a worried elderly gent, struck motorless just for the need of a flange-rebate dwell angled thruster gusset. A random rummage in the bag of doom offers up something close enough to be hammered into shape. Luckily I carry one of those as well.

It’s sort of organically grown up you see, stuff goes in but nothing is ever chucked out. Time and time again I stare into its’ inky abyss and agonise over the potential removal of – say – the emergency badger, but I know in my heart it’s bad karma and the very next day, I’ll be marooned in need of a pair of furry gloves or crotch pelt. You can’t afford to take any chances on the mean streets of London.

Today I dispatched the entire hated weight into the far corner of the barn, wrestled a 100PSI into the Roadrat tyres and blasted off from base accompanied only by a phone, mp3 player and a headful of dirty work angst that only fast fresh air could clean out. It wasn’t until I was spinning out on a gear ration of 53:12 did my helmetless head make itself known as Darwinian selected flies failed to dodge 44mph of speeding forehead.

I’ve never enjoyed solo road riding because – well – it’s a bit dull. If you’re not properly fit, it hurts too much going up and there’s no social protocol that allows you to rest and have a sit. I ride on the road most days but only because I’m going somewhere – normally late – so push it as hard as I can and find myself gasping and a bit broken at rides end. So it’s rare that to ride a loop from home for the sake of getting out but two days tied to the ‘puter, muddy, wet trails awaiting MTB tyres and a short break in the weather left this as my only option.

Unemcombered by transporting my entire belongings with me, the climb out of the valley was strangely painless. I assumed a monster tailwind or a lack of effort, yet the myth of some fitness was sustained on standing legs pushing a pretty big gear. Five miles in and sailing along the ridge road, all continued well with enough breath and rhythm to crack along at a decent pace. Ashtma and twenty years of abusing legal and illegal substances generally creates an air gap between ego and lungs that I find increasingly hard to bridge. Not today, must be a tailwind.

About this time, I joined my normal route home from the station, a couple of gears up and reveling in a lack of energy sapping luggage. When I last rode this extended route about a year ago, it took me over an hour to complete a rather epic-lite 15.4 miles. It occurred to me that today I may be doing a little better but assumed the lost headwind would find me or the tyre would explode or the lack of decomposed badger would somehow come into play.

None of these things came to pass but with a mile to go, my legs started to burn and my lungs to produce nothing much other than wheezing or flem. I must learn to spit properly because past 20mph, it always seems to land on another part of my body. Ugh. I managed a standing grind up the final hill to home, nearly totalled the entire enterprise failing to understand the potentially fatal interface of slick tyre and muddy drive, and skidded to an uncontrolled halt outside the barn.

Wrench open the door, check the clock, have an ‘eyes as saucers’ moment, check it again to be sure and then collapse in a spent heap. 49 minutes. I will never beat that unless I lose the nine pounds of courier bag weight off my padded frame. And that would mean giving up beer which, of course, is never going to happen. But if that’s what it is like to feel fit – wow, almost worth riding a road bike for.

Take two bottles into the shower….?

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

… Or just the one keg

Imagine joy unconfined on seeing this officially stamped on the changing room door this morning.

Flickr image

Apologies for the shonyphone image but taking pictures outside of the toilets can soon get you the type of reputation that does not guarantee future employment. But the prospect of a beer flavoured wash and the possibility of being officially drunk on duty elevated me above a ground state of sweaty, annoyed and damp. Sadly all was not as it seems and my reward for a pant dragging headlong plunge into the shower shouting “Unleash the Beer” was merely boring H20 with no happy additives.

Talking of things not being quite what they seem, today I attended a workshop with some of our Human Resources clones. There was much to joke about that is food, drink and probably a fine after dinner cigar for the hedgehog, but I can’t repeat it. I just can’t – see that bit about above ^ about future employment? It’d be one of those.

I did learn something though. For example, it’s no longer personnel. And it’s gone beyond human resources, now we’re all fully synergised with the human capital team. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that but it was almost an alien experience dealing with many, many people who I honestly thought were responsible for only hiring, firing and providing a bit of warning if the building was about to explode.

Apparently this isn’t the case; the fire drill is the responsibility of the facilities group whereas theft of stationary falls under the remit of this never ending procession of similarly dressed, strange acronym speaking, borg like flange who make up this much maligned business function. Must be like dealing with IT if you’re a normal person. Very odd.

Anyway, I retired before being volunteered for anything I think and such is the deficit in the karma weather bank that my entire ride home was best categorised as gopping, bloody wet. I’m going to be needing those Ale Showers if it doesn’t get better soon.